VII
THE LAST ASCENT
The extraordinary rapidity with which a successful airman may achievefame was well shown in the case of my friend, Radcliffe Thorpe. One weekknown merely to a few friends as a clever young engineer, the next hisname was on the lips of the civilised world. His first success wasfollowed by a series of remarkable feats, of which his flight above theAtlantic, his race with the torpedo-boat-destroyers across the NorthSea, and his sensational display during the military man[oe]uvres onSalisbury Plain, impressed his name and personality firmly upon thefickle mind of the public, and explains the tremendous excitement causedby his inexplicable disappearance during the great aviation meeting atAttercliffe, near London, towards the end of the summer.
Few people, I suppose, have forgotten the facts. For some timepreviously he had been devoting himself more especially to ascending toas great a height as possible. He held all the records for height, andit was known that at Attercliffe he meant to endeavour to eclipse hisown achievements.
It was a lovely day, not a breath of wind stirring, not a cloud in thesky. We saw him start. We saw him fly up and up in great sweepingspirals. We saw him climb higher and ever higher into the azure space.We watched him, those of us whose eyes could bear the strain, as hedwindled to a dot and a speck, till at last he passed beyond sight.
It was a stirring thing to see a man thus storm, as it were, the wallsof Heaven and probe the very mysteries of space. I remember I felt quiteannoyed with someone who was taking a cinematograph record. It seemedsuch a sordid, business-like thing to be doing at such a moment.
Presently the aeroplane came into sight again and was greeted with asudden roar of cheering.
"He is doing a glide down," someone cried excitedly, and though someoneelse declared that a glide from such a height was unthinkable andimpossible, yet it was soon plain that the first speaker was right.
Down through unimaginable thousands of feet, straight and swift sweptthe machine, making such a sweep as the eagle in its pride would neverhave dared. People held their breath to watch, expecting every momentsome catastrophe. But the machine kept on an even keel, and in a fewmoments I joined with the others in a wild rush to the field at a littledistance where the machine, like a mighty bird, had alighted easily andsafely.
But when we reached it we doubted our own eyes, our own sanity. Therewas no sign anywhere of Radcliffe Thorpe!
No one knew what to say; we looked blankly at our neighbours, and oneman got down on his hands and knees and peered under the body of themachine as if he suspected Radcliffe of hiding there. Then the chairmanof the meeting, Lord Fallowfield, made a curious discovery.
"Look," he said in a high, shaken voice, "the steering wheel is jammed!"
It was true. The steering wheel had been carefully fastened in oneposition, and the lever controlling the planes had also been fixed so asto hold them at the right angle for a downward glide. That was strangeenough, but in face of the mystery of Radcliffe's disappearance littleattention was paid it.
Where, then, was its pilot? That was the question that was fillingeverybody's mind. He had vanished as utterly as vanishes the mist onesees rising in the sunshine.
It was supposed he must have fallen from his seat, but as to how thathad happened, how it was that no fragment of his body or his clothingwas ever found, above all, how it was that his aeroplane had returned,the engine cut off, the planes secured in correct position, no evenmoderately plausible explanation was ever put forward.
The loss to aeronautics was felt to be severe. From childhood Radcliffehad shown that, in addition to this, he had a marked aptitude fordrawing, usually held at the service of his profession, but now andagain exercised in producing sketches of his friends.
Among those who knew him privately he was fairly popular, though not,perhaps, so much so as he deserved; certainly he had a way of talking"shop" which was a trifle tiring to those who did not figure the worldas one vast engineering problem, while with women he was apt to bebrusque and short-mannered.
My surprise, then, can be imagined when, calling one afternoon on himand having to wait a little, I had noticed lying on his desk a crayonsketch of a woman's face. It was a very lovely face, the features almostperfect, and yet there was about it something unearthly and spectralthat was curiously disturbing.
"Smitten at last?" I asked jestingly, and yet aware of a certain odddiscomfort.
When, he saw what I was looking at he went very pale.
"Who is it?" I asked.
"Oh, just--someone!" he answered.
He took the sketch from me, looked at it, frowned and locked it away. Ashe seemed unwilling to pursue the subject, I went on to talk of thebusiness I had come about, and I congratulated him on his flight of theday before in which he had broken the record for height. As I was goinghe said:
"By the way, that sketch--what did you think of it?"
"Why, that you had better be careful," I answered, laughing; "or you'llbe falling from your high estate of bachelordom."
He gave so violent a start, his face expressed so much of apprehensionand dismay, that I stared at him blankly. Recovering himself with aneffort, he stammered out:
"It's not--I mean--it's an imaginary portrait."
"Then," I said, amazed in my turn, "you've a jolly sight moreimagination than anyone ever credited you with."
The incident remained in my mind. As a matter of fact, practicalRadcliffe Thorpe, absorbed in questions of strain and ease, his headfull of cylinders and wheels and ratchets and the Lord knows what else,would have seemed to me the last man on earth to create that haunting,strange, unearthly face, human in form, but not in expression.
It was about this time that Radcliffe began to give so much attention tothe making of very high flights. His favourite time was in the earlymorning, as soon as it was light. Then in the chill dawn he would riseand soar and wing his flight high and ever higher, up and up, till theeye could no longer follow his ascent.
I remember he made one of these strange, solitary flights when I wasspending the week-end with him at his cottage near the AttercliffeAviation Grounds.
I had come down from town somewhat late the night before, and I rememberthat just before we went to bed we went out for a few minutes to enjoythe beauty of a perfect night. The moon was shining in a clear sky, nota sound or a breath disturbed the sublime quietude; in the south onewondrous star gleamed low on the horizon. Neither of us spoke; it wasenough to drink in the beauty of such rare perfection, and I noticed howRadcliffe kept his eyes fixed upwards on the dark blue vault of space.
"Are you longing to be up there?" I asked him jestingly.
He started and flushed, and he then went very pale, and to my surprise Isaw that he was shivering.
"You are getting cold," I said. "We had better go in."
He nodded without answering, and, as we turned to go in, I heard quiteplainly and distinctly a low, strange laugh, a laugh full of a honeyedsweetness that yet thrilled me with great fear.
"What's that?" I said, stopping short.
"What?" Radcliffe asked.
"Someone laughed," I said, and I stared all round and then upwards. "Ithought it came from up there," I said in a bewildered way, pointingupwards.
He gave me an odd look and, without answering, went into the cottage. Hehad said nothing of having planned any flight for the next morning; butin the early morning, the chill and grey dawn, I was roused by thedrumming of his engine. At once I jumped up out of bed and ran to thewindow.
The machine was raising itself lightly and easily from the ground. Iwatched him wing his god-like way up through the still, soft air till hewas lost to view. Then, after a time, I saw him emerge again from thoseimmensities of space. He came down in one long majestic sweep, andalighted in a field a little way away from the house, leaving theaeroplane for his mechanics to fetch up presently.
"Hullo!" I greeted him. "Why didn't you tell me you were going up?"
As I spoke I heard plainly and dis
tinctly, as plainly as ever I heardanything in my life, that low, strange laugh, that I had heard before,so silvery sweet and yet somehow so horrible.
"What's that?" I said, stopping short and staring blankly upwards, for,absurd though it seems, that weird sound seemed to come floating downfrom an infinite height above us.
"Not high enough," he muttered like a man in an ecstasy. "Not highenough yet."
He walked away from me then without another word. When I entered thecottage he was seated at the table sketching a woman's face--the sameface I had seen in that other sketch of his, spectral, unreal, andlovely.
"What on earth----?" I began.
"Nothing on earth," he answered in a strange voice. Then he laughed andjumped up, and tore his sketch across.
He seemed quite his old self again, chatty and pleasant, and with hisold passion for talking "shop." He launched into a long explanation ofsome scheme he had in mind for securing automatic balancing.
I never told anyone about that strange, mocking laugh, in fact, I hadalmost forgotten the incident altogether when something brought everydetail back to my memory. I had a letter from a person who signedhimself "George Barnes."
Barnes, it seemed, was the operator who had taken the pictures of thatlast ascent, and as he understood I had been Mr. Thorpe's greatestfriend, he wanted to see me. Certain expressions in the letter arousedmy curiosity. I replied. He asked for an appointment at a time that wasnot very convenient, and finally I arranged to call at his house oneevening.
It was one of those smart little six-room villas of which so many havebeen put up in the London suburbs of late. Barnes was buying it on theinstalment system, and I quite won his heart by complimenting him on it.But for that, I doubt if anything would have come of my visit, for hewas plainly nervous and ill at ease and very repentant of ever havingsaid anything. But after my compliment to the house we got on better.
"It's on my mind," he said; "I shan't be easy till someone else knows."
We were in the front room where a good fire was burning--in my honour, Iguessed, for the apartment had not the air of being much used. On thetable were some photographs. Barnes showed them me. They wereenlargements from those he had taken of poor Radcliffe's last ascent.
"They've been shown all over the world," he said. "Millions of peoplehave seen them."
"Well?" I said.
"But there's one no one has seen--no one except me."
He produced another print and gave it to me. I glanced at it. It seemedmuch like the others, having been apparently one of the last of theseries, taken when the aeroplane was at a great height. The only thingin which it differed from the others was that it seemed a trifleblurred.
"A poor one," I said; "it's misty."
"Look at the mist," he said.
I did so. Slowly, very slowly, I began to see that that misty appearancehad a shape, a form. Even as I looked I saw the features of a humancountenance--and yet not human either, so spectral was it, so unreal andstrange. I felt the blood run cold in my veins and the hair bristle onthe scalp of my head, for I recognised beyond all doubt that this faceon the photograph was the same as that Radcliffe had sketched. Theresemblance was absolute, no one who had seen the one could mistake theother.
"You see it?" Barnes muttered, and his face was almost as pale as mine.
"There's a woman," I stammered, "a woman floating in the air by hisside. Her arms are held out to him."
"Yes," Barnes said. "Who was she?"
The print slipped from my hands and fluttered to the ground. Barnespicked it up and put it in the fire. Was it fancy or, as it flared up,and burnt and was consumed, did I really hear a faint laugh floatingdownwards from the upper air?
"I destroyed the negative," Barnes said, "and I told my boss somethinghad gone wrong with it. No one has seen that photograph but you and me,and now no one ever will."